This week:
- Ingram says it can block AI companies from buying your books, but there is a massive loophole.
- Traditional publishing claims growth, but adjusted for inflation, it is actually down 4.7%. Indies appear to be surging ahead.
- Tor launches a genre-blending imprint. Amazon starts flagging religious leaders. A
- cultural signal in hockey suggests major changes in reader preferences.
- A new AI tool that could save you hundreds in CPA fees.
Ingram Allows Publishers to Deny Sales to AI/Tech Companies
Thomas: Ingram going to war like this needs some context. For some authors, the publishing world begins and ends with Amazon. They do not realize there are other ways books reach readers.
Jonathan: Ingram is the monster that controls how indies get their books into bookstores. If you want bookstores, you are usually dealing with IngramSpark.
Thomas: And traditional publishers use it too. Ingram is the largest book distributor in the world, with global reach. Many major traditional publishers rely on Ingram for distribution. IngramSpark is their print-on-demand program for indie authors. Advanced indies use it to get books into independent bookstores and, in theory, Barnes & Noble, although Barnes & Noble is not a fan of print-on-demand.
Can Ingram really stop AI companies from training on books?
Jonathan: Ingram released a statement acknowledging concerns about AI companies using books for training. Since the Anthropic case, which we have covered extensively, tech companies have tried to work around restrictions. Instead of pirating books, they buy physical copies and scan them. Their argument is that purchasing a physical book gives them a license to read it, and therefore to train AI on it. The court focused on illegal sourcing, not usage.
Ingram now offers an opt-out form allowing publishers to request that Ingram deny sales to AI or tech companies that intend to use books for training. Personally, I have no idea how they would enforce this. How do you know who is buying a physical copy? Ingram admits they are doing what they can. This feels like a “we are on your side” gesture.
Thomas: This is performative corporate nonsense. It is all style and no substance. It lets Ingram and publishers pat themselves on the back while accomplishing nothing in reality.
This happens when corporations live in a world of words and forget how the real world works. Let me introduce a basic legal concept, the First Sale Doctrine. Copyright applies to the first sale of a book. If Jonathan writes a book, I cannot print my own copy. That is infringement. But if Jonathan buys a book and sells it to me, I can resell that physical copy.
That is why you do not truly own ebooks. You license them. If you owned them, you could resell them. With physical books, you can. So, if an AI company wants your book, they can buy a used copy or simply not disclose who they are.
Jonathan: There may be some benefit if Ingram sets a precedent. Other distributors might follow. That could matter in future lawsuits if companies use books improperly, though defining improper use is still unclear.
Thomas: If you sell someone a physical product, you cannot dictate how they use it. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. It is basic reality. Anyone who has bought or sold a book at Half Price Books knows this.
You can use a book however you want. My wife took a beloved children’s book our kids partially destroyed and cut out panels to frame as art. Some of the book was eaten. Some was trashed. Some is on our wall. All of that was legal.
This kind of corporate signaling irritates me, and even our reporting on it feels like playing along.
Jonathan: It is still something to watch. If trends continue, there could eventually be real enforcement behind it.
Thomas: Nothing is happening legislatively until the filibuster goes away. The Senate requires near–constitutional amendment–level votes to pass anything meaningful. Unless it sneaks into a budget bill, AI regulation is not moving.
Tor Announces Commercial Fiction Imprint: Wildthorn Books
Thomas: Tor announced a commercial fiction imprint, Wild Thorn Books. This matters because Tor dominated fantasy and science fiction for decades.
Jonathan: I grew up reading Tor. This imprint targets commercial and upmarket women’s fiction, including suspense, paranormal mystery, magical realism, speculative nonfiction, and historical fantasy. The goal is crossover publishing, blending genres to reach overlapping audiences.
Indies on Amazon have seen strong financial results from genre blending, often with subpar writing. Tor wants in. This is a gamble that genre blending is worth institutional backing and that Tor’s gatekeeping gives it credibility.
Thomas: Indies succeed less often than people think. Millions try genre blending every year and most fail. It is like buying a food dehydrator and running everything through it. Most results are terrible. Then you try one thing, like Skittles, and suddenly it works. Now the Skittles company installs industrial freeze dryers and sells the product themselves.
Jonathan: The key point is that traditional publishing is finally studying indie data. Instead of indies chasing traditional trends, traditional publishers are chasing indie trends.
Thomas: This is not new. It goes back at least to Fifty Shades of Grey. Indie experimentation creates trends, and traditional publishing follows years later. Genre blending is risky. I do not recommend it unless you have already succeeded in at least one genre.
Genre blending is like chess boxing. You alternate between playing chess and physically boxing. To succeed, you must already be good at one and then learn the other. If you are bad at both, combining them guarantees failure.
Many authors blend genres because they cannot write a solid mystery or a solid romance. They hope one will compensate for the other. It does not work. Each genre must stand on its own. To succeed, the book must satisfy readers of both genres. That requires mastery of both, which is harder than writing in a single genre.
Genre blending is not for beginners. It is not for authors who sold fewer than 10,000 copies of their last book.
Reader-Led Writing Prize Launches with Hachette UK Involvement
Jonathan: There is a new reader-led writing prize involving Hachette UK. It offers £50,000 and uses reader voting to create a shortlist before judges pick a winner. Reader-led contests are not new, but this is a large prize with major publisher backing.
Traditional publishers are applying Kickstarter logic to discovery. They want audience validation first, then editorial judgment. It is platform-first acquisition combined with reader engagement as proof of market. If this works, expect more hybrid submission and voting funnels.
They are not crowdfunding. They are crowdsourcing data.
Jonathan: But the data will be poisoned. Authors will mobilize their audiences to vote repeatedly. It becomes a popularity contest, not genuine discovery.
Thomas: Something similar happened in 2012. It was my first year fully immersed in author marketing. That was when Michael Hyatt’s Platform came out. Publishers looked at Twitter and Facebook followers and assumed popularity equaled sales.
It worked briefly, then collapsed. Any metric becomes useless once it becomes the goal. Authors gamed the system by buying fake followers and none of those likes resulted in sales.
The same problem applies here. A tech-savvy author could create a bot farm to win this prize. They could spend $5,000 on bots that pass CAPTCHA and JavaScript checks and walk away with £50,000.
This is why crowdfunding works and voting does not. Bots do not have money. The moment you require a dollar, bots fail. Kickstarter creates a humans-only zone because money is expensive to fake.
I once told publishers they should use Kickstarter to test books and sign the ones that fund. They were not interested. Now I understand why. If an author can raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, why do they need a publisher?
Publishers are not really in it for money. If you want money, start a plumbing business. Publishing is a vanity business, like owning a winery or a coffee shop. What publishers want is control. Editorial gatekeeping is the promise.
They struck out last year. The only book in the top ten from 2025 was Kamala Harris’s autobiography, an obvious hit requiring no editorial insight. They could not place a second book. Now they are asking readers what they want, but they are asking the internet, and the internet is mostly bots.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/19/50000-reader-led-writing-prize-launched?
Magazine Publishing Anxiety: Hudson News Distribution Uncertainty
Jonathan: Magazines are feeling the burn. They are not having a good time right now. Reports suggest Hudson News may stop distributing magazines in the tri-state area starting February 7 after laying off 236 employees.
That raises serious concerns for major magazine publishers about airport terminal sales, which represent hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. One industry expert compared it to an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs. If Hudson News stops stocking magazines in airports, magazine sales could collapse.
Magazines are classic impulse buys. You are bored, sitting on a plane, you did not pack a laptop, and maybe you do not want to stare at your phone. So you grab a magazine and flip through it. I cannot count how many times I flipped through Little Sky magazine and found interesting things I never bought.
This matters beyond magazines. Books are also impulse buys in airport terminals. Bored travelers pick up a book thinking, “I should educate myself,” or, “I do not want to stare at my phone for this flight.” If Hudson News pulls back, that is a major hit not just to magazines, but to the entire impulse-buy ecosystem.
Are magazines losing cultural relevance?
Thomas: This is a zeitgeist issue. One of the biggest things that hurt magazines is the cultural shift toward phone use, especially in private moments like sitting on the toilet. Historically, magazines were consumed there. Now that behavior has shifted to phones.
We are also increasingly uncomfortable touching other people’s phones. Someone asks, “Can you take a picture of us?” and you hesitate because you know where that phone has been. That cultural shift hurts magazines.
Another challenge is quality. Many magazines feel less interesting. They struggled to adapt because they are not immediate. Reading a magazine often feels like reading last week’s news. By the time an issue comes out, the news, commentary, and humor have already played out on social media in a 24-hour cycle.
If I were running a magazine, I would focus on slower, deeper reporting with more context and less sensation. Instead, many magazines chase drama and try to mimic social media.
Jonathan: And social media is better at being social media.
Thomas: Children’s magazines may still thrive. We subscribe to more magazines now than we have in years, because we subscribe for our children. We get Clubhouse Junior, which our kids genuinely enjoy. We also get World Magazine, which offers deeper, more thoughtful news analysis from the World News Group.
That kind of content is not what you find at Hudson News. Airports stock celebrity magazines, gossip, Time, Newsweek, and outdated computer magazines. By the time those computer magazines cover CES, the event happened weeks ago.
Jonathan: We update listeners weekly on new AI models. Magazines cannot keep up. A digital article beats a magazine by weeks, depending on the production cycle.
Thomas: Magazines require massive distribution to survive. You are selling low-cost products with full-color printing on every page. To make that work, you need advertising subsidies and enormous print runs to keep unit costs low.
As people shift from magazine reading to phone scrolling, the economics collapse. It also does not help that most magazines are owned by a small group of European corporations, which limits viewpoint diversity. Much of it feels like CNN in magazine form.
That sameness makes magazines less interesting. World Magazine stands out precisely because it offers a different perspective.
Jonathan: It provides depth you cannot get from instant reporting. You need time to digest and contextualize events.
Hybrid publishing: MBA-Led Teams Snag Simon & Schuster Trade Distribution Deals
Jonathan: Two MBA-driven, entrepreneur-led hybrid publishers have landed trade distribution deals with Simon & Schuster, according to Publishers Weekly.
This signals increased corporate and systems-oriented thinking entering publishing. These models test content independently, then move into traditional distribution. It blends indie experimentation with traditional reach.
Thomas: Simon & Schuster competes with Ingram at the top tier of distribution. Not all publishers have their own distribution network, but Simon & Schuster does, and some publishers quietly distribute through them.
This MBA-style nonfiction model is different. An author can succeed financially even with modest book sales if the book functions as a business card or brochure.
CEOs often publish books about their companies. You see them in Dollar General, Hobby Lobby, or Starbucks stores. Most customers will not read them, but seeing the book reinforces credibility.
I went through a phase of reading CEO books when I was building a company. Zappos is another example.
Jonathan: And many of those books are written by the same ghostwriters.
Thomas: Exactly. This is not new. What is new is Simon & Schuster working with smaller, hybrid players. Business books have struggled in recent years, largely because businesses themselves have struggled since 2020.
Some companies are thriving. I recently watched Elon Musk at the World Economic Forum. His companies’ compounded rate of return outperforms BlackRock. That was striking, even if the interview itself was not especially revealing.
For years, business publishing focused heavily on DEI themes. Books like White Fragility dominated. Readers are fatigued. They do not want that anymore.
The next breakout business book has not been written yet. If someone finds the right tone for the current era, there could be hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
What is the modern equivalent of books like Getting Things Done, Never Eat Alone, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The 4-Hour Workweek. Those titles are decades old.
The modern equivalent probably involves AI, but not as a step-by-step tool guide. By the time a book is published, the technology has moved on. Instead, the opportunity is philosophical. It may need to address how humans and AI can work together inside organizations?
If someone can write that book well, there are millions of dollars waiting for them.
What is a ghostwriter, and is it just AI?
Jonathan: Someone asked whether “ghostwriter” is a new term for AI writing. Yes, in a way. A ghostwriter is someone you pay to write a book for you. Their name does not appear on the cover. They receive a flat fee, write the book, and move on.
Thomas: There are different kinds of ghostwriters. Some books of the Bible were effectively ghostwritten. In ancient Rome, there was a profession called an amanuensis. This person listened to dictation, wrote it down in shorthand, and then rewrote it in long form.
That practice still echoes today. Abbreviations like “etc.” come from Latin shorthand. In the New Testament, Paul sometimes names his amanuensis. In Romans, Tertius identifies himself as the one who wrote the letter. Paul also occasionally took the quill and wrote a line himself, noting, “I, Paul, write this with my own hand.” Some Bibles even show those lines in a different font.
That is one kind of ghostwriting. Another kind is when the ghostwriter does all the work. There is no dictation, no detailed notes, just vague prompts. The ghostwriter effectively writes the entire book. In Christian publishing especially, many books are written by the same small group of ghostwriters.
Jonathan: If you are reading a book by a politician, celebrity, CEO, or pastor, the odds are high that it is ghostwritten. Their time is usually better spent elsewhere.
Thomas: I am curious about what AI is doing to the ghostwriting industry.
Jonathan: It has destroyed it. Ghostwriting is largely gone. What makes more sense now is ghost editing. You take AI-generated text and turn it into something readable and human.
Thomas: Editors are busier than ever because people are using AI to generate sloppy drafts and then hiring editors to turn that material into something good. If you can position yourself as someone who turns straw into gold, there is real demand for that.
Jonathan: Like Rumpelstiltskin.
Is Traditional Publishing Shrinking? The Real Story Behind “Growth” Numbers
Thomas: New numbers from the Association of American Publishers report November 2025 showing 1.9% growth for the month and 0.5% growth year to date. On the surface, that looks positive.
However, once you adjust for inflation, the numbers are still negative. But this is progress. It is nominal growth instead of nominal decline.
Paperbacks were hit hardest, down 5.6%. Ebooks are flat, which translates to a real decline of about 2.7 to 3% after inflation. Hardbacks showed real growth, even after inflation.
There is growing demand for premium, beautiful hardbacks, especially limited editions. Much of that growth likely came from Rebecca Yarros, who had top-selling paperback and premium hardback editions at higher price points.
Source: AAP StatShot Report, November 2025.
Traditional vs. Indie: The AAP Report Meets KDP Select Reality
Thomas: As always, we compare traditional numbers with indie data by looking at the KDP Select Global Fund. While some recent months dipped slightly compared to the previous month, every month is still higher than the same month a year earlier.
Jonathan: That matched author chatter online. Many authors reported slowdowns in December or January.
Thomas: Overall, adjusted for inflation, traditional publishing is down around 2%, while indie publishing is up roughly 10%. That does not mean every individual author is up.
AI-driven authors, people running dozens of pen names and publishing massive volumes, are getting more bites at the apple. A human author publishing one book a year only gets one bite per year. The AI publishers are nibbling away at attention and page reads.
In Kindle Unlimited, downloads do not pay. Page reads do. Readers continuing to read is what generates income.
Jonathan: And remember, the KDP Select Global Fund only reflects Kindle Unlimited reads. It does not include direct sales, Amazon purchases, or Shopify sales. KU alone is growing about ten times faster than the traditional publishing industry.
Thomas: Indie publishing thrives on innovation. With fewer gatekeepers, authors can experiment and find underserved micro niches. One of the best ways to make money is to find a niche no one else is serving, serve it well, and stay quiet about it.
I consult with authors who quietly make five figures a month by doing exactly that. I do not share their genres because that would hurt their businesses. But I will share the principle.
Find your Timothy. Serve that Timothy. If you can find one real person you understand deeply, there are thousands or millions like them. The more specific you get, the better you do.
Jonathan: I used to target individuals, not trends. Not romance readers, not demographics. One real person. I needed to know where they walked, where they turned left or right, because we were targeting them in physical space.
Marketing works the same way. When you know exactly who buys your book and why, you stop wasting time. You stop throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Thomas: If your Timothy is named “Timothy,” you probably do not have a Timothy. Real people have real names and real ages. Saying your reader is “a woman between 25 and 35 “is not a person. No one is between 25 and 35. Everyone has a specific age.
This feels backward, but if you can thrill one specific reader, you can thrill millions. J. R. R. Tolkien was writing The Hobbit for Christopher Tolkien. If he could delight his son, he could delight the world.
Sources:
Traditional Publishing Data (AAP)
Indie Publishing Data (KDP Select Global Fund)
- KDP Select Global Fund Payouts – Updated December 2025 (Written Word Media)
- Royalties in Kindle Unlimited – Amazon KDP Help
- KDP Select Benefits – Amazon KDP
- Self Publishing and KDP Select – Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Additional Reference Sources
- Kindle Unlimited & Author Payouts: The Amazon KDP Select Global Fund Explained and Graphed
- KENP Calculator (Updated September 2025) – BookBloom
- KENP Calculator – Kindlepreneur
- Royalties Estimator – Amazon KDP Help
New Patron Tool: Not a CPA
Thomas: I have a new Patron Toolbox tool that ties into this week’s Novel Marketing episode on taxes for American authors. Our next patrons-only Q&A will feature Seth Norris, a CPA who works with authors. You can become a Novel Marketing Patron here.
The new tool is called Not a CPA. It is an AI assistant that helps answer tax questions and conduct tax research. It can pull information directly from IRS.gov. The goal is to help you prepare better questions for your real CPA.
Here is what Not a CPA does for authors:
- It answers simple tax questions fast when the answer is clear.
- It switches to “that depends” mode to help you untangle tricky questions.
- It gives you copy paste questions you can send to your CPA.
- It links to official resources so you can learn more and verify the details.
Patron access starts at $10 a month and includes more than 80 tools. There is Not a Lawyer, Not a Literary Agent, Not a Developmental Editor, and Not a Copy Editor.
These tools are not replacements for professionals. They help you handle the basics so your paid time with a CPA or lawyer focuses on the complex questions. If your CPA charges $150 an hour, Not a CPA can explain what a tax deduction is just fine.
Will Amazon Start Flagging Religious Leaders?
Jonathan: This is a fascinating incident from Author Media Social. Janey Abale shared a screenshot of her Amazon author page showing a gray label that said “Religious Leader,” in the same spot you might see “#1 New Release” or “Best Seller.”
Amazon may be testing a feature that tags nonfiction authors as experts in certain fields. Not every test gets deployed. This looks like spaghetti against the wall, and it feels AI-powered. We will have to watch how it plays out.
If Amazon starts tagging authors this way, it could have targeting potential. Imagine future labels like “religious leader,” or even something politically charged.
Thomas: The key question is whether customers can see the tag. In Janay’s screenshot, it was visible, but Amazon runs constant split tests. Just because she saw it does not mean everyone did.
Even if the label is not public, Amazon absolutely maintains private metadata behind the scenes. That metadata feeds the recommendation engine.
Jonathan: From an ad targeting perspective, I do not see enough activity on the page to justify that label. Her book only has 23 reviews. That is not much data to generate a tag like this. I wonder if it is coming from Author Central, or the metadata there.
Thomas: Janay’s theory is that Amazon derived it from her bio, which describes her as a missionary, or possibly from text in the book.
Jonathan: That would make more sense. There is not enough on-page activity for this to be behavioral.
Thomas: The challenge is what happens if Janay does not want to be presented as a “religious leader.” Some people write specifically to avoid being seen as part of formal church leadership.
Also, “religious leader” is a weird label. It is the kind of phrase outsiders use. Religious communities have their own terms, pastor, priest, rabbi, imam, and “religious leader” is not usually one of them.
It can even feel like the kind of term used to categorize and exclude rather than accurately describe.
Jonathan: We will keep an eye on it and see whether it spreads, and what other labels Amazon starts using.
Someone joked that they want theirs to read “Leader of Nerds.” I do not think we get to pick what the AI calls us.
Thomas: Social media lets you pick titles. Amazon does not. You do have some control over how you describe yourself, but you cannot control how Amazon labels you.
What is the Kindle “Ask this book” feature, and should authors worry?
Jonathan: Brian Cantor asked, “Any thoughts on the new Kindle ‘Ask this book’ AI feature where readers can ask questions about the book?” We covered that a few weeks ago. The short version is that it appears to be in testing. The feature helps readers remember what is happening so far, who a character is, and similar questions.
It does not give spoilers. It only answers up to the point you have read.
Thomas: People are furious about this, and they need to know it is not going to ruin your author career.
There is something worse than Amazon summarizing your book with a feature like this. It is having AI summarize your book without reading your book. Then it summarizes based on reviews, social posts, and chatter, which is another layer removed from the actual text. If AI is going to summarize, it is better that it has the source material.
If you want a bigger story, it is Amazon reducing DRM. With no DRM, anyone can upload an ebook to their AI of choice and do “Ask this book” and much more with a better model than whatever Amazon is using. That is a bigger deal, and nobody is freaking out about it.
Also, this feature may help compensate for poor reading education. Many kids are not learning traditional reading comprehension. I saw a report that a significant percentage of children presented with a physical book try to swipe it because they are so used to screens.
You can blame “Ask this book,” but it may help your book reach a generation that struggles to read, while still paying you.
Zeitgeist: Vibe Shift in Hockey
Jonathan: Let’s talk about WWE with knives on our feet, also known as hockey.
Thomas: A few years ago, pride night in hockey triggered major drama. Some players opted out of wearing pride-themed jerseys or tape, and the outrage cycle was intense. The NHL even backed off pride nights for a season because it became a distraction from the game.
Fast forward to today. The Washington Capitals’ captain, Alex Ovechkin, and 12 European teammates chose not to wear rainbow tape on their sticks on pride night. Eight American players did wear it. And no one cared.
Sometimes the story is that there is no story. You have to watch the negative space. You expect conflict, and it does not happen.
Jonathan: When you expect action and see none, that absence matters.
Thomas: People want to be left alone. Let the players who want the rainbow tape use it. Let the players who do not want it skip it. If you don’t punish anyone, the drama goes away.
For some people, the drama was the goal. They wanted to force a stance. If you do not participate, “How dare you.” That cancel strategy is not working the same way anymore.
Jonathan: In my world, extremist movements enforced conformity. If you did not follow the rules, the clothing, the rituals, the posture, you were punished. Watching 2020 through 2023 felt uncomfortably familiar.
Thomas: We saw the same pattern socially. If you did not change your avatar to the current thing, you got attacked for not displaying Black squares, Ukraine flags, slogans, or whatever the cycle demanded.
It is fine if you want to support the current thing, but bullying people who do not is a strategy that is losing cultural traction. Now, the person being pressured often gets defended, and the bully gets backlash.
Thomas: If you’re still on social media, you do not have to do the current thing. The consequences are not what they used to be, and that is good because it is exhausting to keep up.
People will demand that you take a position on every conflict and controversy. You can say, “I do not know, I write military sci-fi. Let me tell you about wars in space.”
The irony is that hockey, one of the most violent sports, is modeling a kind of peace by letting people differ without forcing compliance.
Zeitgeist: Karens Have a New Acronym A. W. F. U. L.
Thomas: We’re reporting on this early, and we’ll keep following it. This is a significant cultural shift, and the acronym is, frankly, awful.
It stands for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.” It is being used in a way that feels similar to “WASP,” which stood for “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” That term became popular in the 1960s and 1970s and was often used to shut down debate. “Oh, you’re a WASP, your opinion doesn’t matter.”
It is interesting to see how much has changed. I was watching White Christmas, and there’s a joke about there being no Democrats in Vermont. I remember thinking, “Wow, that was a different time.”
Now “AWFUL” is being used as a modern version of that same rhetorical move. “Oh, you’re an affluent white female urban liberal, your opinion doesn’t matter.” It is basically an acronym version of the Karen meme.
Millennials popularized “Karen” as a generational label because Karen was a common name among Boomer women. But it did not have cultural endurance. It was overly specific, but also overly broad. It grabbed too many women, including women it did not really apply to.
“AWFUL” is different. It is not tied to a generation, so it can target younger women too. And it is especially relevant in publishing because a lot of people in the publishing world fit that description. Many publishing professionals, and many authors, are affluent white female urban liberals.
This is worth monitoring because it may affect how people interpret you. If listeners or readers are biased against that identity label, they may dismiss what you have to say before they even hear you.
Discrimination and stereotyping create a “what do you do if that’s you?” problem. If people say, “I don’t like WASPs,” and you are one, what are you supposed to do with that?
It’s also telling to see who gets described with the negative acronym. That has shifted over the last 80 years.
Jonathan: I’ve been on the receiving end of Karens a lot. But I saw this most clearly in the homeschooling community when I worked as a teacher or fitness coach. Moms who prioritized safety did not like me because I didn’t seem “safe.” I’m loud, I play rough, I yell, we have fun. That wasn’t appreciated, until they had “the problem class.”
The problem class was 8 to 12-year-old boys. Nothing was wrong with them, they just didn’t want to sit still. The “safe-care” moms couldn’t manage them, so I walked in and had them doing math recitation while doing pushups and burpees. They weren’t talking because they were trying to breathe.
The Karen meme can be funny, and I like memes, but it helps to understand what it’s rooted in. A lot of these women are trying to preserve their neighborhood, protect their kids, and keep their world stable. That impulse can come from love, but it often gets taken to an inappropriate extreme. That’s the meme.
Thomas: The Karen meme is getting politicized.
Early viral “Karen” incidents were often right-coded behavior, even when they happened in places like New York City. Over time, “Karen” has shifted into a politically coded identity.
The “Karen haircut” got pulled into that identity too, which is funny because that haircut is more associated with Gen X women, and Gen X women aren’t likely to be named Karen. The term is messy and inaccurate, but the aesthetic stuck.
At the core, Karen behavior is refusing responsibility while expecting special treatment. The signature line is, “I want to talk to your manager.” It’s essentially saying, “You don’t have authority, so find someone who does, and make them treat me differently.”
Jonathan: Originally, this was tied to the Boomer versus Millennial divide. “Millennial” used to be a pejorative. Boomers felt like service had declined, especially in retail and food service, and they blamed younger workers.
It’s the difference between going to McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A. You expect different levels of service. Karens were the customers who demanded the old standard and wanted employees held accountable for not meeting it.
Thomas: A lot of people have noticed quality declines across the board. Food isn’t as good. Service isn’t as good. Things feel dingier and more run down.
Economically, a lot of it tracks with currency losing value over time and businesses using shrinkflation. You get fewer M&Ms in the bag for the same price instead of paying more. Shrinkflation hits service too.
Cracker Barrel is a great example. People noticed quality slipping. Instead of baking biscuits fresh, a company can bake them elsewhere, ship them, and microwave them. Save ten cents per biscuit across a thousand locations and it adds up.
The problem is that the Karen yelled at the millennial server who did not make that decision. The server can’t fix it. The restaurant manager can’t fix it either. Corporate made the call. Nobody at corporate knows your name, and they don’t care.
So younger workers got punished for doing the right thing, following store policy. That fuels resentment.
Jonathan: There’s a biblical warning about this: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath.” Jordan Peterson makes a similar point. If you punish someone for doing the right thing, you create a monster.
Millennials got punished by customers for problems they couldn’t fix. That created generational resentment. It’s exactly the kind of dynamic that fosters discouragement and rage.
Thomas: The political coloring of this generational conflict has flipped.
In 2016 it was “Okay, boomer.” Boomers were coded as pro-Trump, and young people were coded as pro-Clinton. But in the 2024 election, boomers were the only age group that moved toward Democrats and away from Trump.
Meanwhile, online discourse shows younger men moving in a more conservative direction, the “red pill” culture. You don’t fully see it in voting patterns yet, but you see it in what people are saying online.
Why does this matter for authors and storytelling?
Thomas: This is why it’s so important to pick a Timothy. When you know who your Timothy is, you understand their generation, ideology, region, and cultural assumptions. That changes everything, including who they see as the hero.
Is the hero the woman who notices society is deteriorating and speaks up, or is that the villain? You cannot write a story that appeals to both if your audiences disagree about who the hero and villain are.
Millennials are not young anymore. I just turned 40. People are getting older, and the wheel keeps turning.
There’s also the housing conflict, boomers not moving, boomers buying more homes, younger people feeling locked out. It all adds fuel to the generational divide.
Knowing your reader helps you navigate what hope looks like for them, and what kind of character they’ll root for.
Can fiction help heal generational rifts?
Jonathan: You can also try to repair this in fiction. In Shades of Black, I have a cross-generational relationship between a girl and her grandfather. She respects him because he teaches patiently and doesn’t punish her for mistakes. He corrects her, she learns, and they move on.
In book two, she begins to realize who he was when he was younger; he was the demon hunter and the keeper of the death songs. When the demons return, she sees a side of him she never knew.
That kind of relationship can help heal the rift. You can respect your elders when they don’t punish you for doing your best.
Thomas: One way to bridge these gaps is to show healthy cross-generational relationships in fiction. We have an unusually high level of generational conflict right now.
It’s not the first time. The 1960s were full of it too. The wheel turns. Boomers once shook their fists at the Silent Generation, and now younger generations are shaking their fists at them.
Sources:
- After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right
- Who Are the AWFULs? Trump Hates Them, So They’re Doing Something Right
- NY Times Not Too Happy Over New Acronym For Liberal White Women
Watch on YouTube
